The author argues that long-term trends point to a future for physician assistants and nurse practitioners as the principal front-line deliverers of primary care, with physicians focusing on managerial duties and specialty care.
The FDA's decision to put a black-box warning on antidepressant labels may be misleading because it implies that antidepressants have definitely been found to increase suicidality in adolescents, when in fact there is merely a lack of clear evidence about their safety.
Daphne C. Ferrer, MD and Peter M. Yellowlees, MBBS, MD
Telepsychiatry extends access to psychiatric treatment to those who might not otherwise get it, but licensure problems and the risk of boundary violations between patients and physicians need to be worked out.
Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhD and Dorothy E. Roberts, JD
The call for structural competency encourages medicine to broaden its approach to matters of race and culture so that it might better address both individual-level doctor and patient characteristics and institutional factors.
A new Virginia law governing collaborations between nurse practitioners and doctors leaves unresolved key legal issues in team-based care, including those pertaining to medical malpractice and liability and anticompetitive practices.